Similarly, Huey Coyot, the CEO of this giant company, is both extremely well known and a complete puzzle. His name and face are everywhere. He dates starlets and supermodels, his yacht won the America’s Cup three times in a row, and just last week he sat next to the First Lady at the State of the Union address. But he has never given an interview, almost no one has heard him speak, and a deep internet search comes up empty regarding his age, birthplace, or marital status.
Given how reclusive he is, Gabriela Chacón was very surprised when her request to interview him for her podcast was granted. She had only queried him on a lark. She never thought that an important man like him would make time for her modest program that covers the quirky personalities that dominate the valley. But three days after she emailed his publicist, she was sitting in his office getting ready to record him.
She used the time waiting for him to look around, hoping for clues to his personality. A large painting by Pissarro of a meadow full of sheep dominated one wall with a row of bookcases on the opposite side of the room. Most of the books were mid-twentieth century classics: Hemingway, Mailer, Cheever, and so forth while on Coyot’s large mahogany desk was a frayed, much used copy of The Jungle.
Interrupting her inspection, Mr. Coyot barged into the room with the force of a man who enjoyed being one the most powerful and richest people on the planet. He wore his trademark uniform that Gabriela had seen in thousands of online photos with his khaki pants, red polo shirt, and white sneakers accentuating his lithe, athletic frame. “I owe it all to my personal trainer and my paleo diet,” he told her modestly when he noticed her checking him out. He had silver hair, dark skin, and out of place gray eyes. After beckoning her to sit on the couch, he plopped down on the big leather chair next to her. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Chacón,” he said in an imperial tone. He didn’t offer to shake her hand. “Are we set to go?”
Gabriela did a final check of her phone, hitting the record button twice to make sure it was on as she nodded yes. She was momentarily distracted after observing that the tops of Coyot’s hands were hairy, but she tried to act like she hadn’t seen that and instead watched how his every movement, even his breathing, was forceful and planned. He acted as if he owned all the oxygen in the air.
After a pause to get her courage together, she looked him in the eye. “Let’s start with your name. Coyot is a form of coyote?” Gabriela smiled as sweetly as she could. She was dark with jet black hair, looking as if her Mexican ancestors had never interacted with the Spanish invaders. Not very tall, she still had a physical presence that Coyot couldn’t help but noticing. A large part of her attraction was her drive to be a success. Graduating with a journalism degree, it was her ambition to become a hard-hitting podcast-based reporter. She wanted to be the Woodward and Bernstein of our modern era and hoped this interview would be her big break.
Coyot partially repressed a wide grin, as if he knew something she didn’t. “Yes. Or more precisely, both have the same root. The word coyote comes from the Nahuatl word coyotl. Huehuecoyotl, old coyote in English, is a god of the original people of Mexico and the US southwest. He is the god of tricks, pranks, music, and dance. He provokes arguments, disputes, and wars. If you believe, as I do, that gods are created by humanity, you can appreciate that he is both ancient and current. He is inseparable from human existence. Thus, my name, Huey Huey Coyot.”
She looked at him, not quite putting it all together, so she smoothed her red skirt, pulled at the sleeve of her white blouse, and moved on. “Tell me about Coyote Enterprises. How did it begin?”
He took a deep breath before answering not because he was trying to come up with what words to use but because he had been looking at her, sizing her up. “The company has been around forever, but from the Second World War on, it was focused on trivial products: nylon stockings, vinyl records, and whoopee cushions. We were even in the automobile sector for a while, churning out edsels, pintos, and corvairs. My genius, if you want to call it that, was to transition into tech in the 1970s. We were soon the largest makers of floppy disks, dial up internet services, and those finicky cathode ray monitors that weighed a ton and were impossible to trade in, recycle, or give away.” Coyot looked both introspective and nostalgic, conveying with his smile that he considered those the good old days. Then he shook off those feelings and resumed his self-assured attitude. “But the real money came when we moved into software and tech security services. Coyote enterprises aims to always be on the cutting edge of new technologies, our R and D unit has twenty thousand dedicated souls striving to cover every corner of the tech universe. We are constantly scanning the world around us to identify the next big thing. We want to insert ourselves into everything.”
With growing confidence, Gabriela started to probe. “Do you ever worry that you are too powerful? That technology is both pathological and liberating?”
Coyot gave her a “you are a silly girl” look. “Of course, its double edged. That is my role here. I make sure that for every advancement, there is a commensurate backward step. It is a dance.” Coyot got up to merengue to a song in his head. “Forward. Back. Side to side,” he sang as he danced. “Allow me to explain, my girl. Texting makes communicating a breeze at the price of spam and 3:00 AM messages wishing someone you’ve never met a happy birthday. Step. Step. Pivot. Step. Step. And just think how email wrecks people’s sanity when their boss demands something on a Saturday afternoon.” Coyot smiled proudly as he stood waving his hands in the air. He paused, and then began to dance again. Gabriela worried he might get out of range of her phone but was so angry she didn’t look down to check Coyot’s sound levels.
“That’s terrible.” She knew a good journalist does not get emotionally involved in her interviews, but Gabriela couldn’t control herself and began yelling at him. “Have you no shame? No remorse?”
Coyot enjoyed her emotional outburst. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “This is my nature. I am the Trickster, after all.” He held out his hand to invite her to dance with him, but she scowled and refused. “Or maybe it’s something in human DNA that compels them to forever try to climb a greased pole. Between you and me, I think it’s Sisyphus with his futile efforts to push a boulder uphill who is the real father of humanity, not Adam. In any case, don’t ask me why I exist, ask the people who invented me and keep me alive: the people in this valley and beyond who persist in cutting corners, ignoring end users, and bombarding everyone with spam emails, text messages, and phone calls. They are the only real rivals to the work we do here.” Coyot was now doing a lively two-step. Gabriela began to picture herself as his beautiful partner, dancing to the end of eternity in his strong arms.
Her anger was replaced by a euphoric feeling that this interview was going to make her into a star. Everyone needed to hear Coyot in his own words tell how he has flooded the world with frustration. To him, this was all one big trick on people, and he relished the havoc he caused. She would expose him, and in the process become world famous herself. Excited, Gabriela tried to get Coyot to admit to more crimes against humanity. “Will this ever end? Will you ever be satisfied and retire?” Then she succumbed to temptation and let him lead her in a cumbia that both heard only in their heads. Gabriela thought she’d a great goddess in her own right. She’d be the beneficial mother god countering Coyot’s meanspirited tricks.
“No. Never. Rather than slowing down, I am more energized than ever. I get to work each morning excited to tackle whatever ambitious agenda I have set for myself.” Coyot spun her around. “And this work keeps me young. I have survived when so many of the old ones have faded into obscurity. GMO seeds have vanquished the corn god, no one prays for rain anymore, and my best buddy the hummingbird god is so frail, he can no longer get out of bed. Yet I am here, stronger and more powerful than ever.” Coyot now looked big and menacing. Gabriela cringed, suddenly afraid as she let go.
Coyot smelled her fear and tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite.” He laughed, not feeling a bit off for her rejecting him. “I have cleaner ways of messing with you. With a flick of my wrist, your computer will fail to boot up, your phone battery will inexplicably die, and your router will cut off your internet. I am the one who demands you continually create impossible to remember passwords, and I am the god of spam, both the original food product and the spoiler of phone calls, texts, and emails. Do you think that those incomprehensible software manuals write themselves? That is one of our most profitable lines of business.”
“This is terrible. How many thousands of hours do you steal from people every year?” Having discovered in herself a fascination with power and evil, Gabriela was appalled and took out her disgust on Coyot. She gave up on regaining her journalistic distance.
“Billions, maybe trillions of wasted hours, my dear.” Mr. Coyot bowed. “Every year humanity loses more time to tech glitches than it gains in productivity. Thanks to me.”
“You must be stopped!” she shouted, wanting to destroy him. “I am going to tell the world about you and put an end to your tyranny.” She was so angry she considered throwing her phone at him. But she needed it. The phone contained the evidence she would use to counter his infinite evil.
“No one will believe you.” Coyot looked at her with complete sympathy, the kind of look a doctor gives a patient when delivering news of a fatal illness. Gabriela grew more scared. “Because everyone is convinced I am a man of wealth and taste.”
“I have my recording.” Gabriela grabbed her phone triumphantly. She held it up as if it were a crucifix and Coyot was a vampire. He was unimpressed.
“Sorry to be the one to inform you that your phone has failed you. It seems that if you hit the record button twice, you turn it off. That is one of my most ingenious inventions. Do you have any idea how many interview sessions we’ve ruined with that feature?” Mr. Coyot laughed hysterically.
Russ López is the author of six nonfiction books including The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond. He is the editor of LatineLit, an online magazine that publishes fiction by and about Latinx people, and his work has appeared in The Fictional Café, Somos en escrito, Northeast Atlantic, Discretionary Love, Night Picnic, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and elsewhere. López has also written numerous academic articles, book reviews, and works in other formats. Originally from California with degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and Boston University, Russ lives in Boston and Provincetown. His Twitter handle is @RussOnHarrison.
